The Curse
by mockingbird13
Summary: Reggie Moonshroud is cursed with bad luck. Together with his best friend, Vinnie, he must find a way to break the curse, or suffer increasing misfortune.
1. Bad Luck

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Gravedale High or any of the characters therein. I merely like to play with them.

Reggie Moonshroud was not having a good day. Or rather, he was having a bad week. First, he'd spent 3 hours and fourteen minutes of his Monday night writing a theoretical exposition on the relativity of time, only to lose the file when his system crashed. Then, he'd had his glasses broken by one of the football goons on Tuesday when they slammed him into a locker for 'looking at them the wrong way.'

On Wednesday he'd lost a shoe in the marsh, and later fallen down the stairs. Then his partially rewritten exposition was lost once more to yet another computer crash, and he'd spent most of that night trying (and failing) to recover it.

Now, on Thursday, he had slept straight through his alarm, arriving to class late, a first for him.

Settling wearily into his desk after explaining his tardiness to Mr. Schneider, Reggie wanted nothing more than to curl up in his cozy bed and pull the covers over his furry ears, safe from the bad luck he'd somehow attracted in spades.

Unfortunately, Reggie was a devoted student, and would no sooner skip school than give up science. So, he suffered through his lessons, eyes burning, head aching, wishing he was somewhere else, but still attempting to follow Mr. Schneider's lecture on ancient Sumerian cuneiform.

Most of his fellow classmate's paid him no attention, either caught up in their own thoughts, or lulled into a mind-numbing state by Mr. Schneider's topic choice.

The only student who noticed Reggie's pitiful state of being was Vinnie Stoker, who'd witnessed some of his friend's recent misfortunes, and was concerned by the pained expression he was currently attempting to conceal, as well as the drooping of his pointed ears, which he'd come to recognize as one of the leading signs of exhaustion in his werewolf friend.

Eventually the bell rang for the end of class, and the majority of the students filed out of the classroom, Mr. Schneider chasing after Frankentyke, who'd run off with his wooden pointer.

Reggie took longer than usual to get his books together, and tripped over his chair while standing, dropping his books and smacking his head on the corner of a desk on his way to the floor.

"You okay, Reg?" a familiar voice asked, as the vampire pulled the injured werewolf to his feet and gathering his scattered books from the floor.

"Y-yes," Reggie replied, trying to ignore the searing pain lancing through his skull. Whacking his head had not improved his headache one bit.

Reggie held out his hands for the books, but Vinnie shook his head.

"I'll carry these. Wouldn't want you to drop them again. I'll walk you to your locker, make sure you get there in one piece." He flashed the werewolf a reassuring smile, and Reggie gave him a grateful one in return.

"Thanks, Vinnie."

"No prob."

The two pals set off for Reggie's locker, and Reggie only tripped twice on his way there. Vinnie saved him from slamming into the ground both times, and resolved to stick by his friend for the next few days.

Little did he know just how serious Reggie's bad luck was about to get.


	2. More Misfortune

A/N: Sorry about the wait. I've been really busy getting ready to move out, and my Aunt died recently, so things have been pretty hectic. Well, I hope you enjoy this next chapter. Reviewers get cookies

Disclaimer: Oh, and I certainly don't own Gravedale High, and I'm not making any profit off of this.

The next day saw little improvement for Reggie. His alarm clock had failed to go off, and the bump on his head from the day before was making itself known as a dull ache that refused to quit.

Hopes for a return of his luck dashed, Reggie gathered his school supplies and set off through the haunted forest between his house and Gravedale High with his head hung rather low.

He was halfway through the gloomy woods when he literally stumbled upon the unexpected: Vinnie, slouched casually in the shadow of a fallen tree along the path he took every day to school.

"V-vinnie!" the startled werewolf yelped as he identified the individual he'd tripped over in his haste to make up for the time he'd spent retrieving his shoe from a rather tenacious bog rat. "What are you doing here?" He questioned as the two youngsters disentangled their limbs and dusted stray leaves and twigs from their clothing.

"Waiting for you," Vinnie replied, with a raised eyebrow that suggested he thought the answer was obvious.

"Oh," Reggie replied softly, clearly at a loss for words. after all, this wasn't the first time he'd walked to school with Vinnie. They just hadn't done so for a little over two weeks.

"Weellll," Vinnie drawled, realizing that his friend had nothing further to add. "Let's get a move on, then. I'm not too worried 'bout lateness, but I suppose you are."

Reggie blinked, coming to his senses with a start as he registered his friend's words.

"Yes, of course."

With that, the two set off together, Vinnie fending off the three-eyes ravens that tried to steal Reggie's pack, and Reggie tripping over what seemed to be every exposed root in the entire forest. He even got assaulted by a rather lively mud spirit, leaving the two kids liberally splattered as they neared the end of their journey.

Despite the frequent delays, they both arrived somewhat before the first bell; breathless, and, in Reggie's case, bruised, but otherwise in one piece.

By now, Vinnie was deeply concerned. While they walked together, he had coaxed his often bashful friend into laying out all the bad luck he'd been having lately. While the young vampire certainly believed that everyone had bad days, and he supposed it wasn't a stretch to assume that bad weeks were also possible, there was just something about the situation that felt... off.

Watching the young werewolf drop his pencil for the sixth time, Vinnie decided to do something he generally avoided at all costs: research. As soon as the bell rang, he was dragging Reggie with him to the library, and they were going to research bad luck. Then they could come up with a solution over the weekend.

Decided, he felt a weight lift from his shoulders, and returned to staring out the window as Mr. Schneider droned on about something to do with Roman statuary.


	3. The Library

A/N: Sorry for the delay. I'm afraid life has run away with me for quite some time. I'll try my best to update more frequently. ***apologetic face**

Disclaimer: I don't own Gravedale High, and if I did, I would definitely be reviving it for another season or two.

Later, in the library, Vinnie found himself riffling through ancient tomes on misfortune, newer articles on hexes, and everything in-between. Vinnie was more than a little intimidated by the sheer volume of books in the Gravedale library. It's not that he'd never visited the institution; he'd just never seriously attempted to research anything using it. Usually he just sat across from Reggie at one of the enormous hardwood tables, watching his friend shuffle through what seemed to be millions of books, typing away at his odd computer, chattering on about complex subjects that Vinnie could never quite grasp.

Now he was at a bit of a loss as to how to go about this whole researching gig.

"Hey, Reg, what about this one!" he called to his werewolf pal, who was confined to sitting at the table after a bookcase had nearly tipped over and squished him.

"You'll have to be more specific!" Reggie called back.

"Oh." Vinnie realized he hadn't read the name of the book he was looking at.

"Silence!" A crackly voice hollered from somewhere across the library. Vinnie ignored the voice, and proceeded to read the book's title quite loudly.

"The Effects of Cursed Objects on Supernatural En-en…Something."

"Entities," Reggie corrected. "Yes, bring that one over as well."

Collecting the various books Reggie had confirmed as useful, Vinnie walked back to their table, dodging the hissing catlady librarian who'd come to investigate the racket, and plopped the impressive stack down in front of the young werewolf. Vinnie balanced the wobbling tower of books as they immediately threatened to topple over onto the studious werewolf.

"Thank you, Vinnie," Reggie said, cracking open the first tome on the pile. Meanwhile, the catlike librarian reappeared, towering over Reggie with bared fangs and claws. Vinnie's eyes widened, and he tackled the cat librarian, wrestling away from the oblivious werewolf.

Reggie took no notice of the ruckus behind him; too busy poring over the archaic Latin script in an ancient journal. Midway through the first chapter, his eyes widened, and he leapt to his feet, knocking over his chair, tripping, and smacking his head on the table.

"Reg!" Vinnie exclaimed, quickly shoving the squalling cat librarian down a set of spiral stairs and leaping up to help his friend. "You okay?" he asked, pulling the scrawny werewolf to his feet.

"Yes, thank you Vinnie," Reggie assured him, sounding a bit dazed and wobbling a bit. Vinnie decided to keep a grip on his arm, just in case. "Where did you get those awful scratches on your neck?!" Reggie exclaimed. "And your jacket! It's positively shredded!"

"Let's concentrate on one problem at a time," Vinnie chuckled, straightening the werewolf's crooked bowtie and glasses.

"I believe I've discovered the source of my recent misfortunes," Reggie continued, squinting concernedly at Vinnie as the vampire righted his fallen chair with his free hand and guided the unsteady werewolf into a seated position.

"Yeah?" Vinnie asked.

"Yes, this passage here," he pointed at a line of spidery text that made Vinnie's head hurt looking at it. Thankfully, Reggie continued. "It details an object called a lunar-monitor, which was used by a particular coven of Spanish witches before the Inquisition. They used this object to calculate the passage of the moon through the heavens, predicting the prime moment to conduct their rituals. However, one of the lesser witches, by the name of Esserfelda, envied the position of the head of this particular coven, and aspired to take her place. To do so, she would have to dispose of the witches ahead of her in the line of succession, without appearing responsible for their deaths. She discovered that the witches in question planned to use this lunar-monitor together to predict the perfect moment for a specific ritual, and secretly placed a curse of misfortune upon it. After consulting the lunar-monitor, each of the witches involved suffered terrible misfortune, culminating in their collective deaths. Esserfelda's deception was eventually revealed by one of her cohorts, and she was burnt to death. The remaining witches sold the lunar-monitor to a peddler, and that's the last mention of it in this journal."

For a moment, both teens were silent, absorbing the enormity of what Reggie had discovered.

Finally, Vinnie broke the silence.

"What makes you think it's this luna-thingy that's got you jinxed?" Vinnie asked.

"Because," Reggie moaned, throwing his arms up in the air, "Last Sunday night, I was searching the attic for a particular telescope to use in my astronomy experiment, and I stumbled across an object matching the exact description of the lunar-monitor described in this journal. I satisfied my curiosity as to its function by experimenting with its use in my project. I managed to match the passage of the moon along my astronomical charts, and stored it away with the rest of my astronomical equipment. "

"What was it doin' in your attic?" Vinnie asked, raising an elegant black eyebrow.

"I'm a werewolf, Vinnie," Reggie sighed. "I believe my Uncle Remus purchased the device from an antique store, to determine when the moon would be at its strongest. Of course, he was crushed by a falling tree some years ago…" Reggie lapsed into silence, and Vinnie fidgeted agitatedly.

"So," he broke in, "What's the fix?"

"Pardon me?" Reggie queried, snapped out of his thoughts.

"How d'you fix this?" Vinnie repeated, gesturing at Reggie and the book.

"Oh!" Reggie exclaimed. "Well, the journal doesn't specify."

"What?!" Vinnie hollered. "What'ya mean, it don't specify?!"

End Note: Ha! Take that, a cliffhanger! (Promise I won't leave you hanging for too long) And now we know more about the cause of Reggie's curse. But what's this? Is there a cure? What happens when Reggie's luck runs out? Will Reggie have a fatal accident like his Uncle Remus!?

Oh, and thanks to all of my loyal followers for your monumental patience with my slow progress. Red velvet cupcakes for everyone.


End file.
